November 13, 2005

Edie Carey at the Moonlight

"If I start to cry... I may not stop..." We don't know, from the song, if Edie did start to cry in that hard conversation with her father. It seems likely. We do know that she stopped, though. When she introduces the song now, she grins and her face beams, and she gently scolds the audience: "If you need to have that kind of a conversation with somebody, don't wait 27 years like I did... You never know..."

"When I Was Made" is the song that pushed Lynn over the edge when we saw Edie Carey open for Radney Foster back in June, so it's the one she was most waiting to hear. She bought the CD that night, but it was stolen when my car was broken into a couple of days later. Lynn went to Edie's website and bought all the CDs that she had. So we were familiar with most of the songs. There was a new one though, about not letting yourself get sucked into hanging on to a bad relationship, that had Lynn 's name all over it. Edie tells a very funny story about sending the MP3 of the song to a girlfriend who badly needs to hear that message. "Where were you fifteen years ago?" says Lynn.

The Moonlight is the perfect venue for this kind of a performer. It just passed it's 2nd birthday, which is kind of astonishing. Harrelson is clearly a fanatic, thank goodness. He has a very clear vision of the kind of music he wants to present and, perhaps even more importantly, the kind of setting that will present it to the best effect. The result is one of the best music rooms in the country and every week he's got great performers coming through.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jim Ohlschmidt (aka Lost Jim, aka Jim O) who opened the evening. Superb fingerstyle guitar player with a wonderful warm, rich voice. His songs aren't as biting as Edie's -- he's more interested in the wit of the wordplay than in plumbing the depths of hurt. He did a mix of his own songs along with a handful from Mississippi John Hurt, and each one was a gem.